The last week or so online has been particularly joyless, especially for minorities. Beyond Elon Musk reposting a tweet claiming women were “built to be traded to another tribe,” President Donald Trump saying he never had the “privilege” of going to Jeffrey Epstein's island, and Bonnie Blue going on a press tour clearly designed to drum up controversy – while the world watches Gaza be starved from the safety of our screens – we also had to endure discourse about Kim Kardashian’s new shapewear…for the face. And another Sydney Sweeney advert.
Kim Kardashian’s newest product is marketed to women to give us more defined jawlines. For $48, it’s a glorified piece of Velcro you strap around your head while you sleep, promising “targeted compression for shaping & sculpting” via “collagen yarn.”
Meanwhile, an American Eagle advert starring Sydney Sweeney featured the actor saying:
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour.” After the camera zooms across her body, she concludes:
“My jeans are blue.”
Kim, let the round-faced girlies live.
Both campaigns caused uproar, understandably so. Kim Kardashian’s latest Skims product is the pinnacle of her brand’s contribution to relentless, ridiculous beauty standards aimed exclusively at women. Many were rightly angered by it, myself included.
The backlash against Sydney Sweeney, however, has been louder and more complex. The campaign sparked debate around eugenics, race, beauty standards, and white supremacy. Many pointed out that using the phrase “great genes” – alongside references to her hair and eye colour – evokes sinister undertones of eugenics, a thoroughly discredited racist, fascist ideology. In America’s current political climate, with the resurgence of fascism and white nationalism, these inferences can’t just be brushed off as unintentional or naive.
Dr. Anastasija Kārkliņa Gabriel, author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, wrote on LinkedIn: “Think a little about the ideological assumptions encoded in the media you consume and what’s actually being sold here. It’s not just denim. It’s an ad campaign firmly rooted in the ideology of American whiteness.”
Then came the political co-signs. After The Guardian revealed that public voting records showed Sweeney has been registered with the Republican Party in Florida since June 2024, America’s Right claimed her as their darling. Her face has since been plastered across MAGA-themed memes online. Even the White House waded in. When asked about the ad, Trump responded: “She’s a registered Republican? Now I love her ad.” Vice President JD Vance added that Sweeney is an “all-American beautiful woman.”
The substance of Blue's content is actually almost irrelevant; it is our shock, our pain that is the ultimate fetish.
On social media, the discourse has been exhausting, and predictable. Right-wing men accuse anyone criticising the advert of being ugly, jealous, bitter women. Those attempting more nuanced discussions about the ad’s messaging are drowned out by thousands of ragebaiting slop posts. Watching everything unfold, I kept returning to the same thought: Is everything rage bait now?
For those unfamiliar, rage bait is online content designed to intentionally provoke anger or outrage, in order to increase engagement (likes, shares, comments, and views). There are creators whose entire careers rely on it. But it’s not just influencers anymore; brands and politicians now use rage baiting as a deliberate strategy.
Why? Because it works. If your goal is to be seen and make money, it’s incredibly effective.
American Eagle had been largely irrelevant in pop culture for years, until this advert dropped, and their stock reportedly jumped by 18%. Just this past May, the brand was struggling enough to withdraw its annual forecast after weak performance in the first quarter. Now? It’s said to have added around $200 million to its market value.
“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap.”
Brands have always courted controversy, but the speed and scale have escalated in recent years. Sydney Sweeney has fronted other intentionally provocative campaigns too, like the one where she partnered with Dr. Squatch to create a soap called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, which allegedly included a drop of her actual bathwater.
Instagram content
Some have tried to frame it all as satire, but that no longer holds up. These campaigns’ repeated targeting of right-wing men and the objectification of her image suggest intention. After Sweeney hosted SNL, the satire argument unravelled further. Instead, the moment was framed as a turning point in the culture war. Right-wing journalist Amy Hamm even wrote a piece titled “Wokeness Is No Match for Sydney Sweeney's Undeniable Beauty,” where she claimed: “We are all starting to envisage the death of woke. We’re seeing it everywhere, including in the breasts of young, beautiful women. But that’s beside the point. Because with Sweeney, what it really comes down to is this: Sex sells. That has never changed.”
At this point, we have to recognise these controversies as intentional. We’re past coincidence. Billion-dollar companies aren’t naive, well-meaning individuals, or people ‘making mistakes’ – they know what they’re doing. Rage baiting sells, and they’ve figured out how to weaponise our exhaustion.
From emotional abuse to ‘alpha male’ worship, this year’s villa bros are toxic and terrifyingly relatable.
Kim Kardashian is a master of this. She’s built an empire from selling unattainable standards and manipulating media attention to shift products nobody really needs. American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney knew what they were doing, even if they didn’t use the word eugenics, or thought they were just “responding to consumer trends”; we can be pretty sure that a core motivation of the advert was virality via controversy.
So, what do we do? Focus on changing and challenging systems, not individuals. We can hold public figures and brands accountable, but we don’t have to take the bait every time. Avoid engaging with troll accounts and bad-faith actors whose only aim is to rile you up. Act with your wallet: don’t buy from brands that rely on rage bait marketing. Avoid attending concerts and refrain from supporting public figures who exploit culture war politics to gain attention. Don’t vote for politicians who weaponise identity and outrage for views. Rage bait is powerful. But its influence relies on us playing along.
“Women report boys blocking doorways and even barking at female staff, as well as watching increasingly violent pornographic material in class.”
